剥离收入效应和替代效应——对城镇女性市场参与变化的解释

Untangling Income and Substitution Effect:An Explanation for Changes in Urban Female Labor Force Participation

改革开放以来,中国城镇女性的劳动参与率出现了显著的下降。当劳动力市场供给不足、经济增长缺乏动力时,提高女性劳动参与率,就成了一个可行的政策建议方向。本文利用计划经济向市场经济转型这一社会经济背景,将城乡分割体制被打破视为一个自然实验,构建一个"控制-干预"框架,在经验数据中分离出城镇劳动力市场工资增长带来的替代效应和收入效应,解释了有配偶女性市场参与率下降的原因:工资增长带来的收入效应在城镇家庭中占主导地位,使妻子将更多的时间配置在家庭中,从而引起了其市场参与率的下降。

Since reform and opening up,there is a substantial decline in urban female labor force participation rate.When there is shortage in labor supply and lack of impetus for economic growth,improving women's labor force participation could be a direction of policy recommendation.Utilizing the grand backdrop of China's transition from central planned economy to market based economy,this paper views the disintegration of urban-rural separation system as a natural experiment and designs a control-treatment framework.By doing so,we are able to untangle the substitution effect and income effect from a wage increase in the urban labor market.We find that married women's labor force participation decreases because the income effect dominate the substitution effect as a result of a wage increase for urban households.Hence,wives allocate more time in household productions,resulting a decline in their labor market participation.